Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney Captures Jerusalem

By Barry Rubin

Speaking to an often-cheering group of about 400 people in Jerusalem, Governor Mitt Romney gave a speech less notable for what he said but because the audience believed he was sincere in saying it.

At a beautiful outdoor setting with the Old City in the background, Romney declared his strong support for Israel, using phrases often heard from American presidents. He also proclaimed his view that Jerusalem is Israel’s eternal capital. The difference, of course, is that those listening were less inclined to think that when President Barack Obama said similar things to AIPAC meetings he was describing his own views and policies.

Clearly, Romney was restrained by the American principle that partisan politics stopped at the water’s edge, that no politician should criticize a president or U.S. government while abroad. Thus, Obama’s name—or even his specific policies—were never explicitly mentioned.


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What Romney did do, however, was to scatter among the assertions of U.S. support for Israel’s security and a strong belief in a U.S.-Israel alliance some subtle references that many viewers and much of the mass media are likely to miss. Here are the key ones, which give some hints over Romney’s future campaign and possibly his presidency:

--Not allergic to Israel’s center-right. Romney quoted former Prime Minister Menahem Begin twice and referred to “my friend, Bibi Netanyahu.” Obama wouldn’t have cited either man and is known to loathe Netanyahu. Romney and Netanyahu have known each other for years. The Begin quotes were significant: that Israel will never again let its independence be destroyed (a reference perhaps to Israel’s need not to be completely subservient to America’s current president) and that if people say they want to destroy you then believe them (an explicit reference to Iran’s nuclear weapons’ drive).

--“The reality of hate.” This phrase used by Romney struck me as very significant. It occurred in the context of speaking about how many Arab and Muslim forces feel about Israel. It shows that he is aware that the desire to destroy and injure Israel goes beyond pragmatic considerations or that it is something people will be talked out of trying to do. It is enormously important for an American president to understand that there are those in the Middle East who hate the United States and Israel, being impossible to appease or befriend them.

To read the entire article click here.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His book, Israel: An Introduction, has just been published by Yale University Press. Other recent books include The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center  and of his blog, Rubin Reports. His original articles are published at PJMedia.

Understanding Real Israeli Politics

“Can’t anybody here play this game?”  --Casey Stengel, great baseball coach

By Barry Rubin

Stengel’s complaint is the precise description of Israeli politics nowadays. To a remarkable extent—and this has nothing to do with his views or policies—Bibi Netanyahu is the only functioning politician in Israel today. No wonder he is prime minister, will finish his current term, and will almost certainly be reelected in 2013.

Consider the alternatives. The number one such option is Shaul Mofaz who is head of Kadima. Mofaz was a competent general but is a dreadful politician. He may be the least charismatic man I’ve ever met. Tsippi Livni, his predecessor, was a disaster as leader of the self-described centrist party. Here is a list of her major failures:

--She did not take the opportunity to oust the smarmy party leader Prime Minister Ehud Olmert when the corruption charges against him piled up.


--She did a poor job in the dealing with the  end-game in the Gaza war in January 2009.

--She mishandled the coalition negotiations when she did become acting prime minister, leading to the government’s fall.

--She barely beat Mofaz in the 2008 party primary.

--Although her party had one seat more than Netanyahu’s in the 2009 election, Livni bungled the chance for some kind of coalition or rotation agreement. True, Netanyahu held the upper hand and had no incentive to give up much but that was all the more reason for her to offer him a good enough deal so she wouldn't be thrown into fruitless opposition. 

--As leader of the opposition Livni was a total failure, never providing a good counter to Netanyahu’s positions and showing signs of personal panic that shocked people. Even the anti-Netanyahu media couldn’t rally behind her.

So Livni was a catastrophe; Kadima, itself a merger of ex-Likud and ex-Labor party people, developed no personality of its own.



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Mofaz’s record is quite bad, too. In fact, as one Israeli joke puts it, Mofaz in the party leadership accomplished as much self-inflicted damage in three months as Livni had in eighteen months. Previously, he said he would never leave Likud for Kadima, and then did so a few hours later. In 2012 he said he wouldn’t join Netanyahu’s coalition, then did, and then announced he was leaving within a few days  over the issue of drafting yeshiva (Orthodox religious studies) students.

Everyone knows that if an election is held, Kadima will collapse. Where will most of its voters go? Almost certainly to Netanyahu. So Mofaz is bluffing and everybody knows it. He cannot afford to have elections. So there’s another joke in Israel that the country will have “early elections” when Netanyahu’s term comes to an end, just after the end of 2013.

Then there’s the left. The Labor Party has split, with the smaller, more national security-oriented faction led by Defense Minister Ehud Barak sticking with Netanyahu’s coalition. That group should also disappear in the next election.

The remaining part of the Labor party has veered to the left and makes domestic social issues its priority. That might well revive the party—especially with the defection of lots of Kadima voters but it won’t win them an election. The party is now led by Shelly Yachimovich whose career experience consists of having been a radio journalist and has never been a cabinet member.

Of course, there were social protests in Israel last year about high prices for some consumer goods and for apartments. There are genuine problems. But these are the result of economic policies that also brought Israel one of the best records of any developed country in the world during the international recession.

And the fall-out from the “Arab Spring” puts national security issues once again front and center.

Alongside of this has been the collapse of the social protests. Last year the movement could mobilize hundreds of thousands—though the media exaggerated its size—and had broad public sympathy across the political spectrum.

Now it is reduced to hundreds or a few thousands at most. Why? Because the loony leftists ousted the moderate leadership which had some realistic proposed solutions.  

Yachimovich has no monopoly on picking up this support of the discontented. Israelis are realists and know that, unfortunately, a lot of the money intended to be used for social benefits now has to go to build a fence along the border with Egypt and build up Israel’s defensive forces there.

Then there are various centrist good-government style parties that are likely to take votes from Labor and from each other, notably the new party of Yair Lapid, whose father was also a journalist who also started a failed centrist, good-government and secularist party.  

 As I’ve often remarked, there is no country in the world about which people think they know more and that they actually know less. We often focus on bias but ignorance is equally important.

There are three key factors necessary to understand contemporary Israeli politics.

First, Netanyahu is not seen by the electorate generally as being right-wing and hawkish but as being centrist. He has successfully been developing this posture now for about fifteen years without much of the Western media appearing to notice.

Second, Israelis don’t really see the likelihood that different policies are going to make lots of Arabs and Muslims love Israel, or bring peace with the Palestinians, or end the vilification of Israel by the left. All of those things were tried by means of Israel taking high risks and making big concessions during the 1992-2000 period. Israelis remember, even if others don’t, that this strategy doesn’t work.

Third, there is no other politician who is attractive as an alternative prime minister.

We now know that President Barack Obama’s administration thought that he was going to overturn Netanyahu and bring Livni to power on a platform of giving up a lot more to the Palestinians on the hope that this would bring peace. The editorial pages of American newspapers and alleged experts still advocate this basic strategy. They couldn’t possibly be less connected to reality.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His book, Israel: An Introduction, has just been published by Yale University Press. Other recent books include The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center  and of his blog, Rubin Reports. His original articles are published at PJMedia.

   

My interview with Bill Harris on Lebanon

By Barry Rubin

Bill Harris is one of the world's leading authorities on Lebanon. In this interview he discusses politics there; the possibilities of war with Israel; how Western policy let down the moderates; and the dramatic effects of the Syrian civil war on that neighboring country.

Click here to read the entire article.

Article about me and my Israel book in the Jerusalem Post

Here's an article about the Israel book and myself in the Jerusalem Post.

Alger Hiss, The "Loss" of China, and the Obama Administration's Blindspot Toward The Islamist Threat

By Barry Rubin

When Andrew McCarthy drew a parallel between the treatment of State Department official (and Soviet spy) Alger Hiss in the 1940s and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's aide Huma Abedin Weiner today  it reminded me of an interesting discovery from my own research, as documented in my history of the State Department, Secrets of State. As Andrew McCarthy notes, after Hiss was accused of being a Soviet spy and convicted of perjury, Secretary of State Dean Acheson--a friend and colleague in his law firm of Hiss's brother--defended the accused spy.

This doesn't mean that Huma Abedin Weiner--whose father, mother, and brother were very active in the Muslim Brotherhood and who herself worked for Brotherhood front groups--is guilty of any misbehavior. After all, Alger Hiss's brother, Donald, was a respected lawyer who never did anything wrong either. A key influence in Alger's life were the political views of his wife. And while Huma's spouse, Anthony Weiner, has certain personal issues being a Muslim Brotherhood person isn't one of them. On the other hand, though, Alger, unlike Huma--to continue the analogy--never openly worked for Communist front groups.

 Yet the Hiss case does offer us a lot of lessons for today. 

After World War Two ended the State Department had to decide how to convert back to peacetime work. It did a thorough security review of 3000 employees to check for security risks and identified 285 people as possible problems. Most of them had either already quit; were forced to resign or encouraged to go elsewhere as soon as possible. A lot of them went to work for the United Nations.

On July 26, 1946, Secretary of State James Byrnes released a detailed report going through these cases.  The Truman Administration also fully cooperated  with the House of Representatives, which issued its own detailed report on these investigations in March 1948. Remember that there was not enough proof to prosecute anyone and in many cases the information against them was minor and even clearly false, far less than we know for a fact about Abedin Weiner. Having a relative with Communist sympathies was enough to get someone fired though. In the end, about 50 of those who had been investigated but against whom there was no reliable evidence--in some cases just statements by personal enemies--were allowed to remain at junior posts at the State Department.

But in one case, the 1948 House of Representatives' report said that a certain man was "the greatest security risk the Department has [ever] had."  He wasn't identified by name but it was noted he resigned on a specific day. It was the date Hiss resigned. Obviously, he was the person being referred to in the report. Every high official in the State Department had to know that Hiss was deeply implicated in espionage.

Many people know the story of Whittaker Chambers and his warning about Hiss to State. What they may not know that by 1945 and certainly by early 1946 both the State Department and the FBI was convinced of Hiss's guilt. Secretary of State Byrnes was informed. In March 1946, the State Department security staff recommended Hiss should be given a choice between being fired or resigning but also noted that they did not believe they could prove Hiss's guilt in court. So a Republican with impeccable conservative credentials, the future Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, stepped in and offered Hiss a job as president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Hiss accepted and resigned.

Hiss's guilt was thus no secret within the government. One can understand how, lacking proof before Chambers produced pilfered documents, that they might have chosen to remain silent. To defend Hiss publicly, though, was both morally wrong and politically suicidal. Here is a graphic precedent for high-ranking officials knowing there was a real danger and yet loudly denying that any problem existed.

To read the entire article click here.

This is the Political Economy that Barack Built (A Mother Axelrod Fairy Tale)

This is satire. If you don't like satire or don't think I'm funny or that this accurately describes current reality or only want serious Middle East analysis, please do not read this.

From the Collected Fairy Tales of Mother Axelrod

This is the taxpayer

Who paid for the road that Barack built.

This is the IRS agent

That harassed the taxpayer

That paid for the road that Barack built.

This is the truck that

Ran over the IRS agent

That harassed the taxpayer

That paid for the road that Barack built.

To read the entire Mother Axelrod Fairy Tale click here

What Is The True Lesson of A Tragedy in an Aurora, Colorado, Film Theatre?

By Barry Rubin

I really thought there was nothing to say or write about the shootings at the Aurora, Colorado, movie theatre. The prattling, smug, and often unsubstantiated talk filling the airwaves and print pages really added nothing. But then I realized that there is indeed something important to conclude from this tragic episode. And it’s one of the most important things—perhaps the most important of all—to understand about history, civilization, humanity, and society.

Human frailty.

None of us are perfect. We all have weaknesses and shortcomings. And some have more than others. We see a daily display of jealousy, anger, hatred, ignorance, misunderstanding, clashing goals or interests, and the whole panoply of bad things that humans think, say, and do.

Just read the talk-backs to articles on almost any subjects and you quickly find that kind of bickering, meanness, passions overcoming facts, hidden agenda, and the hundred other things that, as Hamlet says, “The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks/That flesh is heir to.”

This is the world we live and die in. Perhaps we succeed or fail, in our own eyes or that of others. Perhaps we don’t have as many material goods as we would like or as much fame or as much respect or as much power. Frustration is not some accident that crops up; it is woven into the very fabric of life.

And so someone cracks, as happened in Phoenix, Arizona, or in Aurora, Colorado. They might crack more quietly as serial killers do, or publicly as do those who suddenly turn on their fellow humans who are strangers to them. Or the cracking can take place on a world stage, as rabid dictators with howling followers go to commit war, massacre, oppression, and terrorism.

Or it can be on a tiny, human level in the daily acts of rudeness and sins to which we are victim and that we commit even to loved ones.

To read the entire article click here.

Our Foreign Correspondent Covers the Revolution

Note the following is satire, even though it is just about precisely what actually happens:  

A man stands in a square, somewhere in the Middle East, screaming slogans: “Jihad is the only way! Down with America! Death to Israel!” An American reporter approaches.

“Excuse me, sir, but I’m an American journalist and wonder if I might ask you some questions.”

“Sharia is the only…Oh, sure, just a moment.” The man clears his throat, “Long live democracy! Up with human rights!” He turns to the reporter, “Hi, my American friend. Have a nice day! What do you think of the Red Sox’s chances? Of course, they could use more depth in the bull pen!”

“I wanted to ask you what you think of America.”

“America? Very nice place. I might like to live there some day if I’m sent on a mission. We love Americans. We just don’t like their policies. They support Israel. They support our local dictator. If only they would change their ways we could be good friends.” He reaches into his pocket, “Have a sunflower seed!”

To read the entire article click here

Islamists Are Generally Winning But Not Everywhere and Not Inevitably

By Barry Rubin

Hussein Ibish is one of the more interesting Arab writers on regional affairs. In a piece published by the liberal site “Lebanon Now” he contemplates the broader meaning of the Libyan election. Although official results are not in yet it appears that the U.S.-backed National Forces Alliance led by the NATO-installed leader, Mahmoud Jibril, won a big victory.

In this light, Ibish critiques the idea that “assumes the inexorable rise of Islamist parties.” He is right and properly adds: “Libya shows that Islamists can be defeated in contemporary Arab elections, and this should be celebrated and emulated, not ignored or dismissed.”

Part of the problem, of course, is that the mass media and the analysts it generally features have so often—with almost monopolistic power—repeated that Islamists wouldn’t win or that it didn’t matter because they are really moderate. This has created a reaction among wiser people who warn the Islamists are winning and aren’s moderate.

Ibish doesn’t want the Islamists to win and stresses that they can be defeated. The question, of course, is how they can be defeated.

To begin with, seeing what happened in Libya reminds us that Islam is not some monolithic force that is inevitably radical or Islamist. Just because revolutionary Islamists can validly use quotations from the Koran and other Muslim holy books to justify their ideology doesn’t mean everyone will be convinced they are right.

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Ibish quotes the columnist Charles Krauthammer as writing that what’s “taking place in the region is an Islamist ascendancy, likely to dominate Arab politics for a generation.” And Ibish responds:

“There is no doubt that Islamist parties will be major factors in the coming decades. But what Jibril’s victory demonstrates is that the `Islamist ascendancy’ is by no means assured or even likely.”

I think Islamist ascendancy is likely but not assured. That’s not because I believe Arab politics are “relatively homogenous,” far from it. The problem is the collapse of Arab nationalism coupled with the weakness of liberal reformist views, and the Islamist side’s relative coherence and organization.

Let’s briefly look at some countries:

Click here to read the entire article.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His book, Israel: An Introduction, has just been published by Yale University Press. Other recent books include The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center  and of his blog, Rubin Reports. His original articles are published at PJMedia.

Yankee Go Home! Saith the Good Guys

By Barry Rubin

"Which Side Are You On?/They say in Harlan County/There are no neutrals there./You'll either be a union man/Or a thug for J. H. Blair."  --Florence Reece, "Which Side are You On?" 1931

 The interesting news was not that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was pelted with stuff while visiting Cair, the important issue was who was doing the pelting. Once upon a time, anti-American radicals threw things at U.S. leaders. But now….

Reportedly, the hurlers of objects were people from the Free Egyptians Party and other Egyptian liberals. At the same time, leading Christians, including Naguib Sawiris who is the man behind that party and perhaps the most outspoken anti-Islamist figure in Egypt today, refused to meet with Hillary. (For Sawiris' critique of Obama, see here.)

Why? Because these people see the Obama Administration as an ally of the Muslim Brotherhood. That might sound far-fetched to the mainstream media (though not to you, dear readers) but it is taken for granted in much of the Middle East. Oh and they also remember that the Obama Administration cut the financial support to liberal groups granted by its predecessor.


In the articles of liberal Arabs; the statements of Persian Gulf Arab establishment figures; the conversations of Syrian, Turkish, Iranian, and Lebanese oppositionists, the idea that the U.S. government is now helping the Islamists is taken for granted.

Let me repeat that: It is taken for granted.

So it is the liberals, the democrats, the moderates who now view America as their enemy. Yet supposedly the U.S. policy is promoting moderation and democracy, right?

These critics have a strong case. Obama’s Cairo speech was precisely about encouraging Middle Easterners to redefine their identity from a national one—principally Arab—to an Islamic one. Obama invited the Brotherhood to sit in the front row. And when the upsurge in Egypt began and the State Department wanted to support continuity along with reform, the Obama Administration demanded the end of the regime.

Next, without anyone asking him, Obama said the United States wouldn’t mind if the Brotherhood became the government of Egypt. And more recently, of course, he has supported the Brotherhood against the army, demanding that the military turn over power right away, or else.

And in Syria, the Obama Administration backed a Brotherhood-dominated leadership in the Syrian National Council. Islamist Turkey was the ideal country from the White House standpoint, with Obama lavishing praise and almost never criticizing it for becoming pro-Hizballah, pro-Hamas, pro-Iran, pro-Islamist in Syria, and fanatically anti-Israel. And in Bahrain, the Obama Administration was ready to back a revolution putting (Shia) Islamists in power until the State Department stopped it.

"I want to be clear that the United States is not in the business, in Egypt,” says Clinton, “of choosing winners and losers, even if we could, which, of course, we cannot."

Wrong! While of course Islamists won elections in Egypt and Tunisia (but maybe lost in Libya), the Obama Administration has been working to pick the winners and losers. The winners: revolutionary, antisemitic Islamists; the losers: old regimes and liberal oppositionists.

Is it really the West's duty to help push a radical Islamist government into power in Egypt as fast as possible? True, the Brotherhood won the parliamentary election but the election was invalidated. By who? Ah, one might expect a leading American newspaper to know that fact. Here's the Los Angeles Times editorial on the subject:

"To some extent, the military's power — along with economic realities — may have inclined [Egyptian President Muhammad al-] Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood to a more pluralist and moderate course. But if the generals overplay their hand, they will lose popular support and antagonize Egypt's allies, including the United States, which provides the military with $1.3 billion a year in assistance. Both Congress and the Obama administration have put the generals on notice that those funds are in jeopardy if the transition to democracy is thwarted. An attempt to shut down a reconvened parliament would be interpreted inside and outside Egypt as just such an obstruction."

Let's list the points made here:

--The Muslim Brotherhood has become more pluralist and moderate. Why? Because of the military's power and economic realities. How is this logical? You mean that the military's pressure on the Brotherhood has made it more moderate? So by that argument if the military ceased its pressure and turned over government to the Brotherhood then the Brotherhood would be more radical. Yet that is precisely what the Los Angeles Times and much of the media and the Obama Administration is advocating!

How has the economic situation made the Brotherhood more moderate? Presumably because it needs to be so in order to keep Western aid and investment flowing. But both of these factors will be insufficient to help Egypt avoid a crack-up. Then comes the time for demagoguery. Moreover, the bottom line here is to claim that the Brotherhood can be bought off. Like Iran's regime, Syria's regime, Saddam Hussein, and others were bought off?

--If the generals try to limit or keep the Muslim Brotherhood out of power they will become less popular. Well, maybe that is so. But popularity isn't the most important thing in the region. That's an American obsession, not one from Arab politics.

--The United States doesn't like the military's policy and will punish the army (cutting off aid?) if it doesn't surrender. That's a terrible policy. Talk about empowering your enemies and bashing your friends! Why should the United States be the new patron of the most dangerously anti-American group in the world? I know. Because the Obama Administration believes that will make the Brotherhood more moderate. Yet even the Obama Administration has seen that this tactic didn't work with Iran, Syria, Hamas, or Hizballah. Why should it work this time?

Then there are two extremely important points the editorial doesn't tell you, and you won't see in many places:

First, let's remember that the parliamentary election was not invalidated by the army but by the Egyptian courts. Judges have been among the most courageous dissidents in Egypt. Many of them spoke out against the Mubarak regime and they are not the clients of the army but an independent force in their own right. So if you want to exalt the rule of law, you should support the military in trying to enforce a legally binding decision by two Egyptian courts.

Second, the left and liberal forces are largely boycotting the attempt to revive the parliament illegally because they fear the Muslim Brotherhood's monopoly on power. Have you noticed that moderate support for anti-army demonstrations has dwindled away now? It is the Brotherhood that is going up against the armed forces, though leaving the door open for a deal.

PS: The head of Israel's military intelligence has said that Israel's army has stopped a dozen attempted cross-border attacks in Sinai. This is of extraordinary significance since it shows a full-scale offensive is underway and not just the two attacks previously implemented.

PPS: So ridiculous is the coverage in the mainstream media that we are now told by the New York Times and by the Atlantic that Arab liberals jeered Clinton because American conservatives told them to do so! Apparently, the Egyptian reformers are too stupid to figure out for themselves that Obama is their good buddy.

Shakespeare as Political Analyst: Richard the Third and Barack the First

Note: This is an article about literary matters with some satirical content. If you only want analysis of the Middle East and international political affairs and you don't like satire either please do not read this article. We will soon return to our regularly scheduled programming  While this article is intended to amuse somewhat it is seriously intended to show my appreciation for Shakespeare's brilliance as a political analyst.

By Barry Rubin

I’ve long been impressed by the value of William Shakespeare’s work as masterpieces of political analysis that often can be applied to our own times. And I hope to do a series of such studies for your edification.

Let’s begin with one of my favorites, the opening speech by the future Richard III in the play of the same name. Before we start, note that there is some satirical aspect to this article. It should not be taken completely literally though it is literary. But Shakespeare's magnificent insight into human psychology and politics definitely has something to teach us here.

The framework of "Richard III" is based on a contradiction very appropriate for the contemporary West today. The House of York, to which Richard belongs, has won the War of the Roses. All its members need to do is stick together and maintain their principles in order to rule a peaceful, happy England  for a very long time to come. So Richard should be joyous, shouldn’t he? He begins:

“Now is the winter of our discontent/Made glorious summer by this sun of York;/And all the clouds that lour’d [lowered] upon our house/In the deep bosom of the ocean [are] buried.”

It's 1483, the “sun,” actually son, of York [King Edward IV] has won the kingship and everything is great. Think of the situation of the West, and of Western civilization in our era. Almost exactly 500 years after the events in the play it has won the long Cold War with the USSR. Communism is pretty much dead; democracy is triumphant. The Western world is stable, democratic, and prosperous, headed for a new era of peace and plenty. Everyone should be rejoicing in the most wonderful, prosperous, and happiest countries in world history, right?

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We need your support. To make a tax-deductible donation to the GLORIA Center by PayPal or credit card: click Donate button: http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com. Checks: "American Friends of IDC.” “For GLORIA Center” on memo line. Mail: American Friends of IDC, 116 East 16th St., 11th Fl., NY, NY 10003.

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To read the entire article click here.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His book, Israel: An Introduction, has just been published by Yale University Press. Other recent books include The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center  and of his blog, Rubin Reports. His original articles are published at PJMedia.

Will the Rebels Win Syria's Civil War and What That Means

By Barry Rubin

The tide seems to be turning in Syria. While the civil war is far from over, the regime is clearly weakening; the rebels are expanding their operations and effectiveness. There have also been more high-level defections. What does this mean and why is this happening?

There are three main factors that are making a rebel victory seem more likely.

First, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, with Turkey’s facilitation and U.S. coordination, are sending arms to the opposition.

Second, the regime has been rushing the same trusted units around the country to put down upsurges and these forces are getting tired and stretched thin.

Third, President Bashar al-Assad really has nothing to offer the opposition. He won’t leave and he can’t share power. His strategy of brutal suppression and large-scale killing can neither make the opposition surrender nor wipe it out. Even if he kills civilians and demonstrators, the rebel military forces can pull back to attack another day.

Even though the fighting may go on for months, then, it is time to start assessing what outcomes might look like. Here are some suggestions:

--Ethnic massacres? While there have been reports of such actions—the regime killing Sunni Muslims; the opposition killing Alawites and Christians—what we’ve seen already might be nothing compared to what is to come. Such murders might take place during the civil war or after it ends.

--An Alawite fortress? Assad has built up his defenses in northwest Syria where most of the Alawites live to make a last stand or to try to hold out. How would such a final phase in the war go and could Assad keep the rebels from taking this stronghold?

--Obama Administration bragging rights? We’ve already had leaks about U.S. covert involvement in the anti-Assad effort. If the rebels seem to be winning or do in fact win the war before November, the White House will claim Syria as proof of its tough, triumphant foreign policy. (The elections in Libya, in which reportedly the Islamists were held off by a U.S.-backed government, will be cited as another example of success.)

--But at great risk. What if the Obama Administration increasingly claims credit for regime change in Syria and then has to take blame for massacres or an Islamist takeover?

--The Kurdish factor. Syria’s Kurds have essentially walled off their northeast section of the country. Their armed militia, helped by their compatriots in Iraq, can hold out against all but the most concerted force. The Kurds generally view the regime as repressive Arab nationalists while they see the opposition as Islamists and Arab nationalists. Would a new regime in Damascus make a deal with them for autonomy, or would it be tempted to try to conquer the area? If so, how would the opposition’s Western backers react to such an assault?

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--And then there’s the biggest question of all: Who among the opposition forces would take power? Syria is quite different from such relatively homogeneous countries as Egypt and Tunisia. Let’s just list the different groupings:

Click here to read the entire article.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His book, Israel: An Introduction, has just been published by Yale University Press. Other recent books include The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center  and of his blog, Rubin Reports. His original articles are published at PJMedia.

Why the Mass Media’s Best Effort to Understand Obama’s Failure to Make Israel-Palestinian Peace Fails

By BarryRubin

The Washington Post has just published a very long and detailed article by Scott Wilson on why President Barack Obama failed to make progress on Israel-Palestinian peace. It still stands as the best mainstream media effort to explain Obama policy. Wilson did a lot of work, conducted many interviews, and strives to be fair. The article is useful in large part because it shows how much of what we’ve been saying about the Obama Administration was accurate and it also includes a lot of useful quotes.

For example, Wilson’s article shows Obama explicitly saying—we know he did it but not that he said it in so many words—that America must distance itself more from Israel as a way to persuade the Arabs to make peace. Of course, Obama’s action instead persuaded the Arab side to give nothing and demand more, a conclusion not drawn in this article.

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What’s most lacking in Wilson’s serious effort to get the story, though, is any conceptual sense of why Obama did fail. And this can be largely explained by a curious but constant missing ingredient in mass media coverage. About 95 percent of the article is concerned with Obama’s relationship with Jews and Israel. The Palestinian side of the factor is hardly mentioned. Yet it was this aspect that caused the failure. What makes this stranger in this case is that Wilson is not trying to excuse the Palestinian side for refusing to want to make peace and even for its reluctance to negotiate.

He doesn’t even mention the refusal of Arab states to help Obama by offering Israel something in 2008; Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas’ interview with the Post’s own Jackson Diehl, during Abbas’ first visit to Obama-led Washington, making clear his disinterest in diplomatic progress; Abbas’ pie-in-the-face for Obama when the president called for talks in late 2009, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed, and the Palestinians refused; how Abbas sabotaged Obama by making a statehood bid at the UN; and many more such things.

I’m not seeking here to bash Wilson. He has produced the best account we are going to see in the mass media and yet, ironically, he has added very little—except for some juicy Obama quotes from secret meetings—to what we (and by this is meant you and I) already knew and understood.

Why are the Palestinians—their leaders’ intransigence, the radicalism of a public opinion nurtured in this direction for years, the effect of the competition from Hamas, and so on—left out of the equation? We can offer many suggestions but cannot answer this question definitively. That is a task which also requires assigning each of these factors a priority:

To read the entire article click here.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His book, Israel: An Introduction, has just been published by Yale University Press. Other recent books include The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center  and of his blog, Rubin Reports. His original articles are published at PJMedia.

Globama-Man: To Russia With Love/& Recommended Reading

Please note that this is satire. If you don't like satire please do not click on the link. I promise I have plenty of serious Middle East analysis coming up for you in the next few days but this is for your entertainment in a most difficult time of history. So if you do like to laugh you might well consider clicking here.

As for Middle East content, let me call your attention to two important articles.

Raymond Stock, "The Donkey, the Camel, and the Facebook Scam: How the Muslim Brotherhood Conquered Egypt and Conned the World," is the best account to date of how the Brotherhood camouflaged its domination of the Egyptian revolution from the beginning. Stock, who lived in Egypt for twenty years before being expelled by the Mubarak regime, tells you what you need to do about what I call the worst-covered story in modern Middle East history.

Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi, "Rethinking Libya," is an upcoming star in Middle East analysis who is thoughtful and generally accurate. In this article, he not only analyzes the Libyan election but also sets an example for us all in correcting his own earlier view on the issue. I'm waiting for a final count before drawing my own conclusions but al-Tamimi seems to be right on how and why the Islamists lost the election there.

Good News? Revolutionary Islamists Taking Power Produces Moderation and Ends Terrorism!

By Barry Rubin

Well, now at least the debate is in the open and we can see just how questionable are the talking points of those who claim the United States has nothing to fear from Islamists. So when the New York Times publishes an article with the promising title of “Fast-Changing Arab World is Upending U.S. Assumptions,” it is sad to see that certain assumptions are not changing at all, indeed are not even discussed.

To summarize the article’s thesis, before Obama’s election, the United States thought that pro-American regimes were good and radical Islamists were bad. But now we know better.

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For decades, Obama’s predecessors supported a number of Arab governments, including those in Egypt and Tunisia but not Syria. Obama put the emphasis on engaging Syria but did not directly challenge the Egyptian and Tunisian governments until uprisings began against them in January 2011. Then he threw those two under the bus as fast as possible. But that policy did not apply to anti-American Syria, which he abandoned only in August 2011 after four months of full-scale revolt and massacres far more intense than those which made it abandon the Egyptian and Tunisian governments during the first week of demonstrations.

What makes the effort to talk seriously about the Middle East nowadays so frustrating is that the "mainstream" debate, as illustrated by the Times article, devotes no space to suggesting that perhaps the rapid rise of Islamists might be bad for the United States, that the outbreak of violence from Salafist groups or two armed cross-border attacks on Israel, or other events suggested that the threat had been underestimated.

No, not at all. When talking with “experts” and in the journalist’s editorializing the only theme is that the United States used to overestimate the Islamist threat but now it knows better!

To read the entire article click here.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His book, Israel: An Introduction, has just been published by Yale University Press. Other recent books include The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center  and of his blog, Rubin Reports. His original articles are published at PJMedia.

Israel is in Good Shape Because So Many Others Decided Not to Be

By Barry Rubin

The more I think about Israel’s security situation at this moment, the better it looks.  Obviously, this is counter-intuitive given the media bias, academic distortions, and campaigns for sanctions of various kinds. And, of course, Israel starts from a basis of facing far more security challenges than any other modern state. Still, by Israeli standards the outlook is good.

It’ll take a while to list all of the factors so let’s get started while the inkwell is still full.

On the surface, the “Arab Spring” along with the surge of revolutionary Islamism certainly looks bad but let’s examine the shorter-term implications. By reentering a period of instability and continuing conflict within each country, the Arabic-speaking world is committing a self-induced setback. Internal battles will disrupt Arab armies and economies, reducing their ability to fight against Israel.  Indeed, nothing could be more likely to handicap development than Islamist policies.

While one shouldn't depend too much on expecting Arab regimes to be too busy dealing with domestic transformation to want to stage foreign adventures against Israel, this is far more true than in past decades. And even if they would like to attack Israel they are less able to do so effectively given their disrupted societies, weakened armies, uncertain alliances, and lack of a Western sponsor. 

Every Arabic-speaking country is likely to be wracked by internal violence, conflict, disorder, and slow socio-economic progress for years, even decades, to come.

Westerners are going to be disillusioned as reform stalls; the oppression of women increases; and Islamism produces unattractive partners. True, the Western left romanticizes Islamism but the number of people persuaded that these regimes are more attractive than Israel will be less as what Marxism traditionally described as “clerical-fascist” movements flourish.

Moreover, for Turkey and Iran the last year has been a disaster for their regional power ambitions. With rising Arab Sunni Islamist movements in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, and Syria, Sunni Arabs see no need to turn to non-Arab Turks and non-Arab, non-Sunni Persians. 

Turkey’s influence is limited to northern Iraq and, thanks largely to the Obama Administration’s backing, with the Syrian opposition. And if Syria became either Sunni Islamist or more moderate democratic, Damascus would quickly dispense with any need for Turkish patronage.

As for Iran, it has lost virtually all of its non-Shia Muslim assets, notably Hamas. Again, Sunni Arab Islamists are not going to follow Tehran’s lead while Sunni Arab countries don’t want to yield leadership of “their” Middle East to Tehran. 

Therefore, the big Middle East conflict of this era will be Sunni-Shia, not Arab-Israeli. But a series of conflicts have broken out all along the Sunni-Shia borderland as the two blocs vie for control of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Bahrain.

In addition, the Syrian civil war is wrecking that country and will continue to paralyze it for some time to come. When the dust settles, any new government is going to have to take a while to manage the wreckage, handle the quarreling, diverse ethnic-religious groups, and rebuild its military. In Lebanon, a dominant Hizballah, trying to hold onto power and worrying about the fate of its Syrian patron, doesn’t want a confrontation with Israel.

Then there are the surviving traditionalist regimes—Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the five other Gulf emirates—who know the main threat to them is from Iran and revolutionary Islamists at home, not Israel. In fact, they realize, Israel is a kind of protector for them since it also opposes those who want to put their heads on the chopping block.

An extremely important point to note is how completely Arabs, and especially Palestinians, threw away the greatest opportunity they’ve ever had to gain more U.S. support and widen the cracks between Washington and Jerusalem into a chasm. If properly motivated, the Obama Administration was ready to become the most actively pro-Palestinian government in American history, to offer more concessions to the Palestinian Authority (PA), and to put more pressure on Israel than ever seen before.

Instead, they refused to cooperate with Obama and rejected his initiatives. The PA wasted Obama's entire term in refusing even to negotiate with Israel. Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, the PA repeatedly showed the U.S. government that it was the intransigent party. And even if American officials would never publicly admit this, they certainly had to give up as a result.

I provide this list not to rejoice at the misfortunes of others, even those who are hostile, because their people are the real victims. But these misfortunes are the result of decisions they made. This is the reality of the Middle East today.

On the other side has been Israel’s dramatic success in terms of economic progress. The country has become a world leader in high-technology, medicine, science, computers, and other fields. It has opened up new links to Asia. The discovery of natural gas and oilfields promise a massive influx of funds in the coming years.

And despite the usual internal quarrels (social protests, debates over drafting religious students, nasty flaps over personalities, and minor corruption scandals) Israel is basically a stable and united (where it counts) country. The idea that Israel is menaced by the failure to get official peace with the Palestinians is a staple of Western blather but has no big impact in reality.

Of course, there are threats—Iran getting deliverable nuclear weapons; Egypt becoming belligerent—but both lie in the future and there are constraining factors. In Iran’s case, there is external pressure and problems actually building weapons; for Egypt, the army as well as the balance of force constrains the radical Islamists.  And if there are conflicts, Israel is well able to defend itself.

Foreign editorial writers may never admit it; foreign correspondents may thunder doom, but nonetheless Israel and its security are in good shape.

This article is available here. A different version of the article is published in the Jerusalem Post.